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Who has experience with tankless water heaters? I've read of problems with them when combined with things like newer front-load washers, who only take on small amounts of water for short periods of time (not long enough to get hot). Although my unit has a built in heater so that shouldn't matter.
I am wondering what other problems I might run into if I do tankless on the next house. Do you prefer one centralized unit for the entire household, or do you have specialized under sink ones in bathrooms, etc?
The house on the photograph is located in the village of Vna in Switzerland. In my opinion it is particularly ugly and does not go with the traditional village architecture.
In terms of heat insulation, normal concrete is pretty bad. However, there are some newly developed quatlities of ultra ligth concrete with a density of 760 kg/m3 and a thermal transmittance of 0.181 W/mK. Resistance to water is lower than usual, and it cannot be used for ceilings manufactured from prestressed concrete. But the two types of concrete can be combined for a new building.
Not sure that the energy savings properties are comparable to those of a "Passivhaus".
Search for the concrete house on the photograph above!
This sort of concrete house resembles at the many military bunkers built during the world wars.
The house is situated in Vnà (Grison / Engiadina) which is one of the most expensive areas in
Europe and in the same valley as St. Moritz. If you really like to live in a military bunker there
are many possibilities to buy an old one from the Swiss military department at a very special
discount and you can choose from places where a normal citizen never might get ground to
build a private house.
A word to the concrete in this special architecture in a very special environment:
The facade will only look bright as seen on the photo during the first 2 years. As there is no roof
overlapping the building (compared to all other houses around) there will be a normally wet
wall outside as there is a lot of rain/snow with strong winds in this special area in the alps. During
winter time where temperatures of minus 40 degrees are seen every year - the degrading
of the material is much quicker than in less difficult climate zones. So the colour might change
to various green, dark grey to black in the different parts.
LOL, I have highlighted the most important findings. The architects building those houses have fallen in love with their own sketches, but little they know about life and organic structures.
Over here centralized tank-less electrical water heaters are common for apartments with little laundry space for a tank. In the apartment where I used to live I had one but it wasn't the proper size, it heated up water close to it well (washer, kitchen sink) but my master bedroom was on the second floor far away from it and water just got warm there, and in December not even warm. I imagine they should have specifications as far as distance and sizing go for using the proper sized tank-less water heater. In my apt a bigger unit was necessary. If you have the space, I think tanks are better.
You have also to concider the quality of living/air quality in a concrete building. For parking/storing a car it is OK, but concrete always gives alkalic smell and you don´t know with what kind of waste the cement has been burnt with in the production process. Often new conrete buildings are sold without them being dried out already, that gives some nasty, unhealty funghi on the walls after moving in.